Foster children placed in hotels for weeks

The provincial government has put youth as young as 11 years old into hotels, sometimes for weeks at a time, for what the Department of Social Development calls "emergency placements,” CBC News has learned.

In 13 cases between November 2012 and November 2014, children aged 11 to 19 were checked into hotels in Fredericton and Sussex.

The majority of the moves were “emergency placement due to unsafe behaviours,” according to a summary of the incidents obtained by CBC News under the Right to Information Act.

“To me, an emergency basis is 24 to 48 hours,” said Norm Bossé, the province's child and youth advocate, in a recent interview with CBC News.

The longest time a foster child was in a hotel room according to the summary, was over the 2012 holiday season.

The child was checked in from Dec. 21, 2012, to Jan. 31, 2013.

The department disclosed the costs of food and lodging: $9,197, however it would not provide the name of the accommodations.

Other stays ranged between a few hours in length, to one month.

Bill Innes, the director of child and youth services with the department, told CBC News, that emergency placements in hotels are done when no other safe option can be found.

“Unfortunately hotels are used… Individuals who go there often are in situation where, as an example, they could be a risk to themselves or a risk to others," he said.

The provincial government’s own emergency home policy, which applies to foster homes and does not have specifications for hotel placements, stipulates emergency placements should be for a maximum of seven days.

Supervision questioned

The department told CBC News in an email that it contracts out supervision for kids in hotel rooms to agencies with family support workers or human service counsellors.

The department did not answer questions on how the supervision works, what companies are contracted, how the workers are checked for criminal backgrounds or verified by the department to be fit to watch over the children or youths.

“I've been advised that this is contracted out. And the contract goes to people who are certified care workers,” said Bossé.

“I'm not 100 per cent comfortable with that, by the way. ‘What did you do to hire that company to provide the care? Are their background checks good?’ You've got another element of potential disaster, quite frankly,” he said.

Manitoba recently moved to overhaul its placement of wards of the province in hotels.

Tina Fontaine, 15, was in the care of that province the day she left her hotel placement and was later found murdered. 

Manitoba has now moved to overhaul its system, creating dozens of new emergency foster home spaces.

The province is also in the process of hiring 200 highly-trained, permanent child-care workers, announced as a part of the overhaul in November.

Tammy Aime, a specialized foster parent living in Winnipeg, said she has had youth come into her home after staying in hotels.

She said she gets the impression that there's not much for them except to watch television and sit around.

She was concerned with the age and state in which New Brunswick foster children were placed in hotels.

“Eleven years of age? I can tell you the longer that child sits in a hotel, the greater those behaviours are going to become,” she said.

Charles Emmrys is a clinical child psychologist practising in Moncton and the founding director of the New Brunswick Youth Treatment Centre.

He said he is concerned about a child with “unsafe behaviours being checked into a hotel and critical of the system that landed them there.

“The system did not support the foster parent sufficiently to be able to head off the crisis when it began,” he said.

“So these crises have been allowed to essentially escalate to the point where nobody can keep the child and where the social worker is backed up into the position of having to go to a hotel. And trust me the quality of life that kids have in these hotels is very, very low.”

Bossé says the incidence could indicate systemic problems.

[I]f the system isn't broken, we're darn near broken.- Norm Bossé, child and youth advocate

“That tells me that, if the system isn’t broken, we’re darn near broken. Because, why would we need a hotel room for a young person to be placed, so that we can find you a home for the next day or the day after?,” said Bossé“

My question to government would be, ‘OK, how are we using these?’ It better be last resort,” he said.

The provincial government qualifies the stays as rare and only as emergency situations.

Emmrys said it shows the system needs an overhaul in New Brunswick. He has presented discussion papers on the topic to government and judges in the province.

“In the system that we champion, we’re recommending, the foster parent has daily contact with a clinician, where you are actually working through the issues the child has on a daily basis, where those foster parents are sitting down as a group on a weekly basis or a bi-weekly basis, to talk about how they’re managing their children and how they’re managing their professional work as foster parents.” He said.

Emmrys added that the system, what he calls wraparound foster care or multidimensional treatment foster care, would save the provincial government money.

He said the provincial government has been exposed to some innovative ideas but is slow to introduce change.

If you have information about this story, or any other, please email: nbinvestigates@cbc.ca